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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York City's Department of Environmental Protection called on state officials Wednesday to ban natural gas drilling in the Catskills watershed, saying it would pose too great a risk to the city's upstate drinking water system. The DEP took that position in response to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's draft regulations on gas drilling in New York's portion of the Marcellus Shale region, which includes parts of the Catskills where reservoirs supply drinking water for 9 million people. The state is taking public comments on its 800-plus page draft until Dec. 31. The city DEP...

And lo, the cry went up from the mainstream media: When, O when, will the Copenhagen climate summit, which concluded on Friday, discuss the real solution to global warming – fewer people? When will Jesse Jackson get around to talking about race? Writing in The National Post (Canada’s largest newspaper) on December 8, columnist Diane Francis waxed apocalyptic, “The ‘inconvenient truth’ overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.” Francis insisted, “The world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed...

Carbon dioxide is poison. That’s what the EPA says. The public health is at risk. Carbon dioxide is poison and an “endangerment” edict has been issued and the government is going to run your life. Even more than it does already. In one more Obama lurch toward totalitarianism, the administration announced yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency has determined that carbon dioxide is a threat to clean air and that it, the EPA, claims the authority to impose binding rules across the society and economy to cut American production of CO2. That’s right, the same CO2 you exhale something like...

Pelosi: As Copenhagen Begins, EPA Finding Underscores Need for American Clean Energy and Security Act Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on the EPA’s announcement today that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment: “The EPA has thoroughly reviewed the scientific literature on climate change, which spans decades of research across a breadth of disciplines and across the globe. The science is clear: global warming is real, its impacts are being felt around the world, and carbon emissions present a danger to public health and the economy worldwide. “As the United Nations Climate Change Conference...

LONDON (Reuters) – Humanity faces a profound emergency and unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, a joint editorial published in newspapers in 45 countries said on Monday. The 56 newspapers said they were taking the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice to implore world leaders to "make the right choice" at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. "The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not...

NEW YORK Tomorrow 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the perhaps unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. Many if not most will publish it on the front page, warning of a "profound emergency." The Guardian of London, which helped draft the editorial, published it today, with a note at the end. Here it is. * Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past...

The EPA is about to announce that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, something that has in many ways been inevitable since the boneheaded SCOTUS ruling in Mass. vs EPA (which essentially found that the Clean Air Act was always intended to be Kyoto-on-steroids.) With thanks to my colleague Will Yeatman, here's a brief summary of what this means, and why you should be appalled. Under the Clean Air Act, an “endangerment” finding means that the EPA will have to grant a waiver to those states (such as California) that want to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles. The EPA...

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any...

WASHINGTON – Officials tell The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated. The EPA will announced its findings at a news conference Monday. The announcement is timed to boost the Obama administration's arguments at an international climate conference — beginning this week — that the United States is taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation. Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released...

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any...

Federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local police today seized wood, guitars, computers and boxes of files from Gibson Guitar's Massman Road manufacturing facility. Sources say the Nashville-based guitar manufacturer is being investigated for violating the Lacey Act, a key piece of environmental law, for importing endangered species of rosewood from Madagascar. Rosewood is widely used in the construction of guitars and sells for $5,000 per cubic meter, more than double the price of mahogany. The island nation off Africa's east coast is a key producer of the hardwood, the export of which has links to...

Greenpeace is running rampant across Alberta’s oil sands. In the past few weeks, 37 activists have been arrested in a spate of incidents targeting North America’s most important energy resource. The most recent occurred on Oct. 5 when 19 activists stormed an upgrader in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. They tied themselves to equipment which is used to transform heavy oil into gasoline. The protesters unfurled banners reading “Climate Crime” and “Climate SOS” to draw attention to an industry they say is killing the planet. In September, two-dozen Greenpeace commandoes kayaked down the Athabasca River to intercept a Suncor bridge where conveyor...

There's something the Democratic lawmakers who are pushing cap-and-trade legislation don't want the public to know. The controversial climate-change legislation winding its way through Congress will impose a massive new national gas tax on the American people. We discovered this by analyzing what the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would do to gas prices and what Americans spend on gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. We found that cap-and-trade legislation will levy a $3.6 trillion gas-tax increase that will impact every American and important segments of our economy. Americans travel more than 200 million vehicle miles each month, and annually we spend nearly...

Reporting from El Centro, Calif. - Across the desert flatlands of southeastern California, dozens of companies have flooded federal offices with applications to place solar mirrors on more than a million acres of public land. But just as some of those projects appear headed toward fruition, environmental hurdles threaten to jeopardize efforts to further tap the region's renewable energy potential. The development of solar-power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged that...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule Wednesday to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of power plants and large industrial facilities. The proposed rule would require polluters to install the best available technology to capture greenhouse gases whenever a new plant is opened or significantly changed. The rule applies to any industrial plant that emits at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. When the rule is final, the EPA said operators of as many 14,000 sources of pollution would have to get additional permits. The proposal, long anticipated and highly controversial, marks the first government...

WASHINGTON � Sen. Barbara Boxer left little doubt she was having a particularly good time Wednesday. Wearing sunglasses, California's junior Democratic senator made her way to a stage on the east lawn of the Capitol, then stood in front of a huge U.S. flag and waved to a throng of supporters as U2's "It's a Beautiful Day" roared through the loudspeakers. "What a great day!" enthused the senator. "This is like giving birth again!" Boxer was celebrating her alliance with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry to introduce a long-awaited bill that, if approved, could land her in the history books....

Taking the “Green Car Challenge” on Thursday night’s Jay Leno Show, a svelte Rush Limbaugh -- declining to don a helmet -- hopped into the electric Ford Focus on Leno’s track behind his NBC studio in Burbank, but instead of driving around the hanging cut outs of Al Gore and Ed Begley Jr., Limbaugh ran right into them. Then, to Leno’s cries of “Oh, c’mon!”, a delighted Limbaugh accepted the penalty against his time score and stopped, backed up and smashed into them again. Limbaugh’s maneuvering ensured a lower score (greater time) than the three previous contestants since Leno’s show...

Like a bad episode of Sci-fi TV serial Heroes, “Kill the Cheerleader Save the World” Global warming fanatics like Jonathan Freedland still intend to advance their Sci-fi theories of anthropogenic global warming in spite of the facts. (see story)and (here) The facts are that their discredited theories that CO2 emissions are the cause of globing warming are fundamentally wrong. So they know that the only way to completely rid themselves of any real rational debate and keep the Al Gore hysteria of global impeding doom alive is to kill all Republicans to save the World. Or as Freedland puts it,...

New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode. British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That is where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama acknowledged the "doubts and difficulties" clouding progress on climate change in Congress, but said the U.S. is determined to tackle global warming at a year-end summit in Copenhagen. "We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act," Mr. Obama told a United Nations meeting on climate change in New York. "And we will meet our responsibility to future generations."

The cap-and-trade movement, spooked by the pounding health care reform took over the August break, is scrambling to persuade nervous Democrats they won’t suffer politically for taking another tough vote this year. “When you get your butt kicked, like we did [after the House energy vote], it focuses the mind,” said Steve Cochran, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s National Climate Campaign. “We found out that this is not something to hide from but something to lean on — even in places where coal is king and Blue Dogs were perceived to be running for cover.” Climate bill supporters say...

Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. climate engineering and it is looking more practical. Several recent reviews of these ideas conclude that cooling the planet would be technically feasible and economically affordable. There are still plenty of skeptics, but even they have started calling for more research into climate engineering. The skeptics understandably fear the unintended consequences of tampering with the planet’s thermostat, but they also fear the possibility...

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office said Saturday that he would veto legislation requiring a third of California's energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, choosing instead to mandate the change through an executive order. The Democratic bills that passed the state Legislature just before the end of the legislative session Friday would have set up the most aggressive renewable energy standards in the nation. But they also sought to limit the amount of energy from sources such as wind, solar and geothermal that could come from out-of-state. Schwarzenegger and some energy producers said the legislation would set...

I’ve always suspected this. There can be only one logical conclusion to the anthropogenic global warming campaign: eliminate human beings. Or, at least, reduce to a minimum their number on the planet. Have you had the sneaking suspicion that climate change activists were seeking to suppress every possible life-enhancing human activity from a long hot bath to a long-haul flight to an exotic destination? Have you ever had the sense that they would actually prefer it if you just ceased to occupy space on the earth, using up - as you do - its precious resources to facilitate your own...

Yesterday at monument square in Portland, liberal envirowackos from all over Maine rallied to shrill for lower standards of living for Maine residents in the name of the greenhouse myth, not to mention helping the government grow bigger and take away more of our hard earned money. The rally, which featured city council members, teamsters, America hating communists and others also circulated petitions calling for green energy in Maine, cap and trade and green jobs. The truth is that Maine is already strangled by environmental regulations against the economy. WE told you a year ago about a plan to build...

‘Government did us in,” says Dwayne Madigan, whose job will terminate when General Electric closes one its factory next July. Madigan makes a product that will soon be illegal to sell in the U.S.: a regular incandescent bulb. Two years ago, his employer, GE, lobbied in favor of the law that will outlaw the bulbs. Madigan’s colleagues, waiting for their evening shift to begin, all know that GE is replacing the incandescent for now with compact fluorescents bulbs, which GE manufactures in China. Last month, GE announced it will close the Winchester Bulb Plant 80 miles west of Washington, D.C.,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US labor unions and environmental groups on Tuesday announced plans for a nationwide campaign to boost support for legislation to promote "clean energy" and battle climate change. The 'Made In America' Jobs Tour will open Thursday in Ohio -- a critical political battleground in US presidential elections -- and visit 50 sites in 22 US states, including other major toss-ups, the coalition said in a statement. Leaders of the United Steelworkers, Service Employees International Union, Utility Workers Union of America were to join heads of major US environmental groups on a conference call Wednesday to formally launch...

"One cause of the blunders that have made the Met Office a laughing stock is less widely appreciated, however. It is that the multi-million pound computer it uses to assist its short-term forecasting for Britain is also one of the four main official sources of data used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict global warming. In this respect the IPCC's computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers." "In recent months, in fact, a curious little drama has...

Energy: As Russian attack submarines patrol our eastern seaboard, Moscow signs a deal to help Castro's Cuba drill for oil off the Florida coast. In Moscow and Havana, the cry is "Drill, Comrade, Drill!"Two Russian nuclear attack submarines have taken up positions along our East Coast in recent days, another sign of renewed assertiveness by the former communist giant. The move comes as Moscow inks a deal with the communist relic of Cuba to drill for oil we refuse to go after. The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the...

HR 2749 is being rushed through Congress, and the house may look to suspend the rules and fast track the bill at Obama’s request. Just what can we expect from this legislation? A lot more of the following: Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind. “I was...

This is really frightening. We warned Americans Barack Obama is a Marxist who would govern through dangerous people. Obama’s new Czar, for “Green Jobs” Anthony “Van” Jones freely admits he’s a proud San Francisco Communist with an arrest record. Because the media has no integrity and works against us, except for Fox News, we have heard little or nothing about this. The amount of damage this confirmed member of Obama’s secret “cabinet” will do as “Green Czar” is frightening to the core. With his signature this radical unelected party apparatchik will be able to crush America’s economy to help Obama’s...

"Wealthy nations should establish a fund that could spend $100 billion a year helping the world's poorest countries to tackle climate change, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday. Calling for the fund to be in place by 2020, Brown said that wealthier nations would be able to raise funds through the expansion of international carbon trading market - in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold to another - and existing development aid. Environment ministers from industrialized nations first discussed proposals for the creation of such a fund at a conference in Denmark last month. Campaigners...

ABSTRACT: Democratic leaders in the House have scheduled a Friday vote on a climate change bill that would establish a complex cap-and-trade system to limit the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, a priority for President Obama. The House Rules Committee unveiled the latest version of the bill, which weighs in at 1,201 pages. It features new items such as $7.5 billion in "green bonds" for a new federal financing agency called the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, extra emission allowances for politically powerful rural electric cooperatives, greater flexibility for states that want to use free allowances for mass transit, and tweaks benefiting...

The coal industry is pushing back against a climate change bill that would likely curb coal use by circulating a map that shows which states would see their electric bills increase the most under the legislation. But supporters of the bill say the industry’s figures are off the mark and don’t factor in ways the bill will offset rising energy costs or the jobs that it will create. Lobbying has intensified, with Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) pressing for a floor vote next week. Waxman reported progress on Thursday in talks with Democrats from rural states who...

A new study indicates that new fuel economy standards announced last month by President Barack Obama will give New England's economy a $10 billion dollar boost over the next 15 years. The new standards will increase the average mileage for light-duty vehicles from 25.4 to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. That will save enough fuel to free up billions of dollars to reinvestment back into the local and regional economy, say researchers from the University of New Hampshire's Carbon Solutions New England. CSNE Director Cameron Wake, the report's author, says light-duty motor vehicles, which include passenger cars, light trucks,...

The government is continuing to encroach on freedoms more and more in the name of climate change. Case in point: An ordinance that went into effect June 1 stating if you sell your home in Austin, Texas and you fail to get a clean energy "green" audit, you will likely face criminal charges. According to an ordinance passed by the Austin City Council passed in November 2008, any home 10 years or older will require an "Energy Conservation Audit. Failure to comply - criminal charges as explained by the local community-owned electric utility: ...more (w/video)...

Director Mike Judge’s new animated television series “The Goode Family” is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words “What would Al Gore do?” Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet’s dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid. On Wednesday at 9 p.m., “The Goode Family” will have its premiere on ABC and become the first animated series on the network’s prime-time...

This will frost their behinds...the holier than thou libtards will not be able to deal with being laughed at. The Goode family's motto is "What would Al Gore Do?" They wanted to adopt an African child but wound up with a white kid from South Africa. Their dog is forced to be a vegan like them, but eats all the pets in the neighborhood. It looks pretty funny. The creator is Mike Judge of Beavis and Butt-Head fame. Check out the clips on the site...the pilot will be broadcast on May 27.

A new propaganda video created by an extreme environmental activist is making its way into America's classrooms and The New York Times loves the whole idea. Enviro obsessive Annie Leonard, Greenpeace member and activist, has created a 20 minute video filled with anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda to encourage kids to eschew "stuff," calling the presentation "The Story of Stuff." Leonard's propaganda piece is so anti-American she even begins her video by saying that her "friends" say she should describe the United States by using the symbol of a military tank because "it's true in many countries and increasingly in our own."...

Even if economists are correct in detecting "green shoots" in the economy, a new survey shows the cumulative effect of the recession still growing in its impact on U.S. households. And, with all due respect to the joys of frugality, many people resent having had to downsize their lifestyles.

"You don't know me."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Consumers will face higher electricity prices if Congress passes a global warming bill without giving utilities some allowances to emit greenhouse gases, electricity providers warned Thursday. "Revenues associated with pricing greenhouse gases would be returned to the very consumers who would be at risk for paying higher energy prices," said Richard Morgan, who leads the District of Columbia's Public Service Commission.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves. A three-judge panel in Washington found that the Bush-era Interior Department failed to consider the effect on the environment and marine life before it began the process in August 2005 to expand an oil and gas leasing program in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas. The appeals court ordered the department, now run by President Barack Obama's appointee Ken Salazar, to analyze...

SPOKANE, Wash. -- The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states. But it's not easy to get sparkling dishes when you go green....

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

In what it's calling a "vote for the future of planet Earth," the World Wildlife Fund wants every light in the world to go dark for one hour on Saturday as a symbolic gesture to call for action on climate change.It's called Earth Hour — and among the places where the lights will go out are the Eiffel Tower, the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing, the Pyramids of Giza and Niagara Falls.And, for the first time in the event's three-year existence, the New York headquarters of the United Nations will also go dark, a move officials say will save $102,...

Have we all suddenly gone mad? Have our wits suddenly deserted us? Has common sense been completely routed from our lives? The indications are not good. In a little-noticed verdict last week, a U.S. District Court of Appeals has decided that the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to act against farmers who endanger public health by kicking up dust in the course of their business. Expect anti-dust regulations and fines to follow. For those unfamiliar with pastoral activities, allow me to enlighten: I grew up on a farm, and can personally attest that most types of agriculture...

Megyn Kelly is way too easy on this guy.